06.02.14

A victory tonight in Philadelphia would leave the New York Mets just a game under .500 and a mere 4 games out of first place in the NL East, ensuring, if nothing else, that the lofty goal of playing meaningful baseball in the month of June will have been accomplished. Before you get ready for the press conference announcing Terry Collins’ extension, however, consider these same, unheralded, under-financed Mets, have already managed a major achievement this season, one that’s been kept an unlikely secret until now. On Monday, the Star Ledger’s Mike Vorkunov reported that last April 30, the Mets broke the single day record for cheesesteaks consumed in the Citizens Bank Park visitors clubhouse, with 103 of said sandwiches devoured over a ten hour span (“though baseball may be a sequence of individualized events, this was the work of a collective. It was planned two cheesesteaks per person, or more for those that were willing to help out where other teammates could not eat their share.”)

By the time the Mets left for Denver, distended and at over-capacity, they were now record-holders, breaking the previous mark that stood somewhere in the 80s.

Though impressive, perhaps it should not have been surprising. When it comes to eating cheesesteaks, the Mets are the 1961 Yankees, and their bullpen catchers, Dave Racaniello and Eric Langill (above), are the Mantle and Maris.

In chasing the record, Langill followed the necessary stratagem. He did not eating breakfast in the morning. He took the early bus, at 1:30 in the afternoon for a night game, to Citizens Bank Park to allow him more time to eat.

The first two were easy, but by the fifth it became a challenge. To ease the burden, he vacillated between chicken and steak fillings. When he came home at night, he felt overwhelmingly bloated. After the second game, the night of his birthday, he could barely finish a beer.

Racaniello took the lost mark with aplomb. As Langill shot for his title, he set about trying to become the single-day champion. In eating seven and a half cheesesteaks, he did, waking up the next morning with a face puffy from all the sodium he had consumed.